Hello Forum folk,

Is there a book or checklist available with a kind of flowchart of how to go about buying a house or flat in Switzerland (or more perticularly Zurich or Aargau). I think it's as follows

1. Be at least "B" status for your Auslander Residency permit
   
2. Visit bank with details of your (and your partners) salary and find out how much they will lend you (can you get an" in principal x chf " bit of paper out of them?). Is it correct that married couples get a slightly better deal?
   
3. Find your place
   
4. If it's a new flat or house you pay a deposit up front to the agent to reserve
   
5. If it's an existing place it's between you and the owner's rep (agent or private individual) whether a deposit is required.
   
6. The owner provides you with a copy of the deeds, building plans and pictures.
   
7. You vist the Kanton (? Kreis buro) and find out what the Rental value for the following year would be (ref. tax offset for next year).
   
8. Armed with all this you go back to the banks and twist their arm for the best deal on the interest. The bank will want a payment of 0.5% of the purchase cost as a fee
   
9. Assuming that the bank signs off on the mortagage you need to get a notary (do they have to be in the Kanton of the purchase property or can they be anywhere). The notary will cost about 2.5% of the purchase cost
   
10. The seller sends your notary the purchase contract who also adjusts the deeds to your name.
    
11. Presumably the notary also coordinates the transfer of funds form your bank to the vendors bank??
    
12. Once the house is yours you can write the mortgage payment (less the rental value) off against your taxable income. (So if you're paying 35 000 in mortgage payments, the Rental value is 20 000, then you can write 15 000 off. Reducing your taxable salary to save say 20% of the top 15 000 of your income (so you'll be 3 000 better off in real terms).
    
13. The Swiss are absolutely convinced that if you invest your own money plus the "tax break" mentioned above then you are much better off setting your mortgage repayments low (interest only) and investing in the stock market, rather than trying to pay back the mortgage loan. This would mean that they expect to make more money by careful investment of cash, profit on the sale of the property (less Capital gains tax) and devaluation of the loan due to inflation. Does anyone know if this entrenched thinking is still valid. My entrenched British thinking is opposite but I've ben wrong before!
    
14. Once you are in you can set about doing work to a property (if it needs it) and this work can also be set off against your income (this chages Kanton to Kanton). Zurich is apparently fine with you buying somewhere run down and gives you carte blanche to upgrade it but Aargau are much stricter. Does that then mean that if you spent 60 000 in a year on refurbishment work you can set this off against your salary (so a net saving of say (20% on 60 000) of 12 000 ).

Please tell me what I don't know or what I've got wrong.

Thanks in advance

Iain

Hi Iain

We've bought a couple of places here - Zurich & Klosters - if you would like some advice please send me a mail or I can give you the name / address of our lawyer who has helped us both times

Sharon

I can't speak to most of your points, but for slow paying the mortgage and investing in the stock market you have to take a lot of factors into account. It sounds quite nerdy but I would suggest putting together a simple spreadsheet (given the flowchart process you have to buying the home this seems reasonable). Consider what sort of things would make you sell the house before you had originally planned, and what the extra transaction costs would be on the larger mortgage balance, you should also have a good idea of what your risk tolerance is before throwing a lot of money in the stock market. If you would feel bad about losing 10% of your money in a given year the stock market may not be good for you (long term you will make money, but you need to be willing to ride out the short term fluctuations), it depends what your risk tolerance is like. If you don't have a clue what your tolerance is, try googling, you should be able to find a simple quiz that will give you an idea what your stock / bond investment mix would end up like.